READ ALONG: GONE GIRL BY GILLIAN FLYNN PART IV AND FINAL THOUGHTS

If you are following a long with us, welcome back. Today will take us through to the end of Gone Girl! Finally! If you are new to this Read Along, you can find Part I here, Part II here, and Part III here.

**Spoilers Ahead**

**Shelley**

I think this last section was the fastest, as far as the speed of reading it went. I stayed up until 3 AM because I could not put it down.

Crazy Amy (my new name for her) continued to ride on the crazy train in this last section. I'll give her credit--she was tenacious and could stick to a plan. She even managed to dupe Desi into helping her continue her evil deception using her wily ways. I'm not gonna lie though, one my favorite parts was how he managed to get the upper hand on her. I thoroughly enjoyed watching her squirm.

How the heck she ends up back in her home, with Nick, relatively unscathed is still somewhat of a mystery to me. I mean, really??!! She ends up in her house....with Nick! Whaat??!!!

And Nick. Ugh. I really wanted him to fight and win. How dare she get away with this--he's stuck with crazy Amy and his reputation is forever sullied by her trickery. What a miserable existence. I pictured him as feeling fairly emasculated at the end.

This last 25% of the novel answered all of my questions and tied up loose ends but I was still left feeling unsatisfied at the end.

So here's my official review:

3.75 stars (can I even do that?--yes, I can!) Here's why:

1) I loved the premise, the mystery, the thriller-ness of this novel. I liked all the guess work and predictions I had to ponder as we read. I loved it when my instincts were right and when I was wrong--well, Flynn's ideas were even better than anything I could've cooked up. How does she even think up this stuff?

2) The characters. Flynn did a fantastic job of writing round and dynamic characters. I knew them. I understood them. My hand slapped to my forehead so many times out of frustration or anxiety or amazement that I'm surprised I don't have permanent marks. Amy and Nick: I loved them, hated them, and loved to hate them.

3) The writing. I had a love/hate relationship with the writing. There were pages that flew at warp speed and I enjoyed every word, every sentence, every punctuation mark (see #2). Then there were pages that felt bogged down and drawn out. I know, now, that those words and pages needed to be there but at the time they appeared to be so unnecessary.Sometimes it seemed like it took hours to go 1% on my Kindle. I'm not sure why. I'm sure it was probably me.

4) The ending. I guess I wanted something more unrealistic but satisfactory. I wanted Nick to stick it to her...to be all "in your face, Amy" and then send her ass to jail. Instead,  Amy got her way and Nick somehow learned to deal with it. Instead of her reaping consequences, I got Amy's smug last lines. To Flynn's credit, her great writing ability made me abhor Amy and so I had a hard time with that ending.

If you have time and (at the beginning) patience, I'd recommend this book. I'm glad I read it. What about you, Courtney?

**Courtney**

Shel, I agree that the last section flew by. Even though it was somewhat short, at this point you are probably devouring it if you are like me, because you want to find out how the whole train wreck will end! 

Nick has a few epic thoughts in this section that I was quite fond of. The summary of one is "Come home to me, come home to me so I can kill you." That was paraphrased, but I bet you can figure out what I left out of the middle! Actually, with my not so subtle clues you did figure it out!

I couldn't believe that she once again turned things around and manipulated the situation to be in her favor. If anyone in this story deserved a break for once, it definitely wasn't her. I was hoping she would be stuck with Desi until the end of time, but of course that didn't happen. 

When I reached the end, I kid you not, I just sat stunned for at least five minutes. I still cannot believe how it turned out. I wanted Nick to find a way to prove everything she did so badly. I wasn't so put off by the ending after I processed for a while because while she thinks she got the last word when all was said and done, Nick really did by saying "I feel sorry for you, because you have to wake up everyday and be you." For me...That. Was. Epic. He can't kill her, he can't leave her, but I still love the fact that he goes right on surprising her and showing her that she can't bend and control people to her will. I think that might be the only poetic justice to be found, because apparently they were made for each other, and are going to suffer forever because of it. 

I feel the most sad for Go. I don't think her relationship with her brother will ever be the same, and she was drug through the mud along with the rest of them but got absolutely nothing out of it. That reality just sucks. 

My official review: 

5 Stars (You're probably thinking I'm crazy! but that is what makes this whole thing so great!) 

1) The premise. I really was fascinated by the blurb for this book. And it is set in Missouri. Being a Arkansas born/Missouri living girl, that is really all I needed. But I was sad it wasn't the Carthage that is about an 1 1/2 away. Thrillers suck me in and make me very emotional and feel it physically that I am DYING to know what is going to happen next. It is hard for me to not love a well-written suspense. 

2) The characters. The people in this book really feel real. (This could be because of real life murders, but who knows. Anybody think at any time the words: Scot Peterson? Yes? Okay! 

3) The writing. While I did quit at 17 pages because I was not getting the writing, after that it was just on for me. The story was weaved so intricately, with all sorts of things interconnected it was just amazing. I mean, for it to end up with the bad girl to have the case sewn up so tight with a bow you can't break it like you're at a wedding shower, that had to have taken a lot of thought. 

4) The ending. It took me a while to process. I was dazed and confused. I was stunned. I was thinking, "This can't be how this ends." But as I am finding lately with books I am reading, I am okay with the not so picture perfect ending because it is real. While I wanted her to get her karma so badly by her being caught and put in jail, this not so happily ever after will have to do. Maybe it will be her own kind of purgatory, and it will be worse than what I wanted since Nick knows everything and hates her, her parents are again making money off of her (after they took everything from her) and she now has to raise a child (That poor kid, hope Nick is in charge of this). Oh, and she is still stuck in Missouri. We all know how much she loves that! 

I haven't read a book that made me think like this in a crime drama since James Patterson's Along Came a Spider. I don't read a lot of it anymore, but when I do it is super crazy thrilling to me since we also all know how much I stink at figuring out who the bad guy is!! 

Hope everyone enjoyed these posts as much as we did! And were able to have some motivation to read along with us! It was a lot of fun, and we will be looking for the next book to look at piece by piece! Thanks for joining us.